


lonely like me

by collectingnames



Series: My Miracle (fjorclay collection) [7]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort, Confessions, First Kiss, M/M, someone PLEASE hug caduceus clay, spoilers for ep85
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 02:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21468253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collectingnames/pseuds/collectingnames
Summary: Fjord overheard Caduceus admitting that he's lonely
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Fjord
Series: My Miracle (fjorclay collection) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1483838
Comments: 10
Kudos: 198





	lonely like me

**Author's Note:**

> Caduceus said he was lonely and I immediately went 'same hat' and I swear if no one asks Caduceus how he's doing next week I am going to riot.

_ “My family had to… I don’t know where they are or if they’re okay. It’s been a long time. And… there is a part of me that is very lonely.” _

That’s when Fjord notices in the bustle that Caduceus slipped away to speak with the Gentleman. And a bolt of sympathy buries itself in his chest and makes his heart twist. He almost spills his drink down his front hearing it. He doesn’t, though admittedly that kind of family is still a little weird to talk about. He’s got enough of a grip on himself to not freak out and get defensive when the subject comes up. It’s a wound that still aches sometimes though. When it feels like they’ve been going nonstop for a week and he just doesn’t have the mental energy to ignore it anymore. And he starts to kick himself for never noticing that same ache in Caduceus too. Wonders how hard Cad’s been pushing himself to finally let that wall slip.

But he keeps a straight face and does his best not to make a scene of it. If it’s something he’s never told the Nein, it’s not something he wants to make a scene over. He does his best not to let himself stare when Caduceus walks past with the half-empty teapot, sort of clutching it to his chest to soak in the warmth. There’ll be time to kick himself over it later. There’ll be time to try and hold Caduceus’s hand underneath the table later. There’ll be time for that but for now, he has to make do with sidelong glances when Caduceus takes the seat next to him, arms folded across his chest. 

He freezes up when he Caduceus catches his glance, going stock still, “Can I help you with something?”

Fjord turns his attention back to the tankard on the table in front of him, “No, nothing comes to mind.”

Caduceus’s voice is thick, weighed down by thoughts long gone unvoiced, “Let me know.”

Night comes, and the gravity of the situation stings when they have to stop themselves from taking up separate rooms and instead pile up all together in a single room, spread between the beds and the floor, closed in by the magical bubble. They got used to the luxury of sleeping without a watch. Even if there is some sort of weird nostalgia to being back in Zadash taking watch. As he prepares to bed down for the night the thought occurs to him that he didn’t see Cree at any point in the evening. Probably for the best, she’d blamed him personally for losing him. And the last thing he needed was to pile on the old wound of that loss on top of the inevitable ache of opening himself up enough to ease Caduceus into doing the same.

He doesn’t bother closing his eyes, just lays there on the floor facing Caduceus. The little bit of moonlight that creeps into the room settles against his face. It dances along his cheekbones. The fuzz that coats his skin diffuses the light, almost as if he were glowing. His snoring might be loud and graceless but it’s never kept him up and with the day they’ve just had Caduceus has every right to sleep so deeply that the ground he lays on could be on fire and it wouldn’t wake him up.

But when’s the next time they’re going to get a chance to talk?

He reaches out and puts a hand on Caduceus’s shoulder, his thumb rubs little calming circles of its own accord, “Duceus?” 

The way he easily opens his eyes tells him he wasn’t as asleep as he thought he was, “Yes, Fjord?”

“Can we talk?” His voice is a whisper at most but he’s still paranoid that the others can hear him.

“About?” 

It’s not  _ really _ a lie, if it comes up they’ll talk about it. “The commune, before we left for Nicodranas. You said we should talk about it.”

He shifts on his bedroll but doesn’t make any move to get up or go back to sleep, “Now?”

“I don’t know when we’ll get another chance,” it comes out more loaded than it sounded in his head.

“Alright then,” Caduceus winces as he pulls himself up to his feet, some combination of his bad knee and the knife that was in his back just that afternoon.

Fjord gets up and takes his wrist to help him the rest of the way up, “I’ve got you.”

“Thanks,” he looks around the room for a moment, “I thought Jester was taking watch.”

“Yeah, she wandered out a little bit ago. Not sure where she went. She should be fine though. Come on,” he guides them out of the room into the low light of the hallway.

“Where are we going?”

“Just trying to find someplace a little more private, Duceus,” he continues wandering with his eyes peeled, maybe for one of the other rooms that the Gentleman had offered before they’d decided not to split up.

He tests one of the doors and it swings open into a room almost identical to the one they’d just left. Going over to the bedside table he lights the lantern and sits down on the bed where he realizes that he’s not quite sure where he should be looking. He can feel Caduceus’s stare on the top of his head. He knows he’s being weird and even weirder for his silence. He should say something. His mind yells words to his tongue but they falter and evaporate into nothingness on their journey. He, fuck, why can’t he get himself to say anything?

“Fjord?” There’s a hint of annoyance to his voice.

His hand shoots out to close the distance between them and hold his hand, “I’m here for you. Whatever it is you need. I’ll help you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry we ever gave you reason to be lonely with us. I’m sorry I made you lonely. I thought-. We should be so much further in curing the Savalirwood, finding your family. Caduceus, I’m so  ** _sorry_ ** .”

He doesn’t know where the emotion weighing down his words come from, it wasn’t this overwhelming when the thoughts first occurred to him. But now that he’s saying it, he wants to find more words for it so bad that there’s an ache in his chest that he can’t find them.

He’s never heard Caduceus cry before.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting. Or if he was even expecting anything. It’s quiet at first, barely anything more than shuddering breath that puts him on edge at what might happen next. Caduceus holds himself, arms crossed over his chest and clutching onto his sleeves and his head bowed to the point where his hair falls to cover his face. 

The silence is broken by unrelenting hiccuping, forceful sobs, deep and shuddering and wracking his entire upper body. For a second Fjord just sits there horrified and unsure of what to do next until he notices Caduceus’s knees start trembling. He springs back up to his feet and wraps his arms around him to keep him upright. And in the next second, he has to grip tighter when Caduceus’s knees give out from underneath him. He can feel Caduceus’s sobs shaking through him where their chests are pressed together. He lets his head fall into the crook of Fjord’s neck, where hot tears soak his collar.

Fjord takes a half-step backward towards the bed where Caduceus promptly crumples deeper into him, holding onto him like he’s the last warm thing in existence, “Shh, shh, it’s gonna be okay. It’ll be okay. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

Caduceus tries to speak but what comes out is another hiccup.

“It’s okay, just, don’t push yourself. Talk when you’re ready,” he can feel his eyes pricking with sympathetic tears but manages to keep his composure.

It takes a few minutes but the sobs slow into even breaths, still with his face buried in his neck where he can’t see him. But if he doesn’t want to be seen right now that’s fine. He can’t help but kick himself for not realizing how threadbare Caduceus must have worn himself out if the moment he gets the chance he sobs so hard he can’t stand.

“I understand,” he starts, “what it’s like to be lonely with other people. I still do sometimes. But traveling together, it’s better. Not gone but it’s better.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Caduceus’s ear pricking up to listen to him.

“It’s weird, when I started traveling with you guys I was used to it. It felt safe. I wasn’t quite sure who I would be if I wasn’t alone,” he buries down the impulse to say it into his hair where it’ll be muffled and lets it come out honestly.

“Alone is a cold place to be,” his voice is strained from the crying.

He hugs him a little tighter, pulling him into his lap without meaning to, “Good thing I’m warm.”

“I guess you are,” he mumbles against his neck.

“I don’t, I don’t think I know what home is. But I know it’s where family is. So, I guess,” he pulls back a little to where he can hold Caduceus’s face in his hands, “You  _ are  _ my home.”

Caduceus seems to freeze a little and something shifts behind his eyes, a wall slowly going back up, “This isn’t transactional. You don’t have to do this just because I helped you.”

“ _ It’s not _ . Caduceus I’m going to help you whether or not you want me to. I’m going to do it because I  **care** . I care about you so much,” he doesn’t stop, a month ago, maybe he would have held his tongue but not anymore.

“Fjord…,” Caduceus sounds like he might try to tell him to stop but his name is all he manages to get out.

“You mean so much to me and I wish I had the words for everything that I feel. I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t feel lonely because you do. And me telling you to stop isn’t going to help, it’s just going to push you deeper into it. Trust me,  _ I know _ . But, I care about you, a lot. I really do and I need you to know that,” the words are so close, he’s teetering on the edge of just saying it, admitting to what he’d first thought was a passing interest, a fleeting crush and nothing more but had settled in his chest and made a home there.

Caduceus chuckles, something tired and laden heavy with emotion, “I love you too.”

“ _ I love you _ ,” he repeats hastily, like he has to take the words back, make it clear that it’s real and not just anyone reading too deep into his words. He says it again, “ ** _I love you, Caduceus_ ** .”

There’s a long pause where they soak in each other’s words before Caduceus manages to speak. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem. Just,” he takes a deep breath, “just know that you can talk to me. To any of us. We’re here for you.”

“I love you,” Caduceus leans into his touch, soaking in the feeling where Fjord’s hands hold his face.

“I know.”

“I like saying it.”

“How do you like hearing it?”

“Too close to call.”

He sighs, a frown overtaking him when he takes note of the tear stains running down his cheeks and how puffy and red his eyes are, “Do you need a minute?”

“Need a lot more than a minute, I think,” he says with a chuckle that eases a little bit of the tension.

“Take all the time you need,” he tucks some of Caduceus’s hair behind his ear in a fond gesture that he’s sure he wouldn’t be able to replicate with anything he could say.

Caduceus leans forward so that their foreheads are pressed together. And it catches him off-guard when he tilts his head and presses a peck of a kiss to his lips, somehow too fast and lasting forever. To the point where Fjord finds himself trailing after him when he pulls his head back.

“It felt like I needed to do something,” he says by way of explanation.

“Anything else you want to do?” He asks, half-jokingly.

“Hmm, not right now,” there’s a hint of mischief in the corners of his mouth.

He swallows down his nerves, “Can I kiss you?”

They’re so close that he can feel the warmth of his breath ghosting over his face when he replies, “By all means, Mr. Fjord.”

Caduceus is warm and earthy when he kisses him. Everything about him is warm, warm enough that the ache in his heart starts to ease. It’s chaste, neither pushing deeper but he doesn’t feel the urgency to do anything like that. He just wants to focus on the points where the two of them meet. On the points where they stop being lonely for a second. If he could just decide to not breathe anymore he would make that choice in a heartbeat but he has to pull back eventually, a little dazed but more than content to just sit there curled into each other, Caduceus haphazardly perched in his lap.

“We should get some rest,” Fjord wipes away the last bit of moisture where an unfallen tear rests at the corner of his eye.

“Here?” Caduceus slumps against him.

“No, not unless you want the others to wake up and think we’ve been kidnapped or killed. Last thing we need is them tearing up the Gentleman’s base looking for us,” he runs a hand through the shaved part of Caduceus’s hair and feels a warm glow flow through him when the scritches bring something that might be a purr out of him. 

Begrudgingly, Caduceus pulls himself back up to his feet with Fjord’s shoulder, “Okay.”

Fjord takes his hand, “Come on, sleepyhead.”

They make it back to the room with Caduceus shuffling sleepily behind him, to the point where he’s practically slumped over Fjord as they walk. It takes some careful steps but they creep back to their bedrolls without waking anyone up. It feels wrong to keep that distance between them now, pushes the bedrolls together without giving it a second thought. And Caduceus doesn’t protest. Lying together on the floor, not really that much closer than they’d been before but now it feels like he’s so close to Caduceus he might wake up joined at the hip. It’s painfully cheesy, but there’s a part of his brain that notes how easily Caduceus fits in his arms, how right it feels to be next to him. Caduceus manages to stay awake just long enough to put a hand to Fjord’s cheek, his thumb stroking along his cheekbone, even in the grayscale of his darkvision he can see the love in his eyes as he drifts to sleep, the hand still moves for a few more seconds after his eyes close. He lets himself drape an arm around Caduceus’s waist and drifts off, not bothering with the hand still on his face. Caduceus smells warm and earthy and this close it’s almost overpowering, but more than anything it’s soothing and familiar. And if he can fall asleep like this every night then that’s enough.

  
  
  



End file.
